Talk Yourself Through It
by stretchingthelimits
Summary: What if Shepard had met Nihlus a night early? What changes, and when will the truth come out? FemShepxNihlus, working up to FemShepxGarrus. This story is going to go through an overhaul, will be re-uploading everything.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Decided it was time to go back through everything, so I'm re-posting this story. some things are in a slightly different order now, tweaked a few things. New first chapter is split up, because it ended up a little... huge.

The bar was noisy. The people were too close together. The beer was too expensive, and her companions smelled.

Her Alliance squadmates had insisted on an outing to drink to celebrate the end of a successful mission—ferrying colony transports, no more, no less—and had woefully neglected to shower since leaving behind holds full of terraforming materiel. The stink of fertilizer and manure was stuck to their uniforms like carbon burns. Impossible.

However, Clyden was buying her a few drinks to celebrate her impending promotion—a new post on a new top-secret ship that everyone Alliance knew about. Shepard was thrilled to finally be rising through the ranks. For a long time, her dedication to the Alliance and her people had been tempered by an increasing need for freedom. Too many rules—not enough choices.

"Glad you came out, Ginnie!" However, once again Clyden was standing too close, shouting in her ear to be heard over the thrumming and scratching of sound synthesizers.

"I can't turn down one last night with my crew, can I?" She replied, tilting her head up to the taller man's ear.

"Can't turn down free drinks." He retorted, clinking his bottle against the one she held tightly against her chest. She grinned, and took several quick swallows of the beer.

"Better order another." She winked at him. Clyden had always been friendly, a joker. A behemoth of a man. As much as she was proud of the muscle on her sturdy frame, no matter how many weights she would lift or how much protein she consumed, men like him would always dwarf her. There was something about it she liked.

She cut her eyes from the view of muscled thighs and an ass wrapped in camo fatigues back up to his face he turned back from the bar, two more bottles clutched between beefy fingers. He paused, grinned and passed her the new bottle.

"Why, commander, were you staring at my ass?" She coughed, the last bubbles of her old bottle caught in her lungs suddenly.

"It's not 'commander' until tomorrow, and I'm finding you a date." As she caught him opening her mouth to say something along the lines of _"Why not you, baby?"_ she cut him off. "A date that isn't me."

"Virginia, baby, this is our last night for who knows how long, you don't want to give it just one go?" He snaked a hand around her waist. This was the closest he had ever gotten to her, and she was honestly surprised. She knew he was attracted to her—he'd followed her like a puppy when he was first assigned to her—but she had never expected him to get handsy. However, she thought she hid pretty well her secret attraction for the dominant male, and the quiet thrill she got from that meaty hand sneaking towards her ass. She knew this feeling though, a distant memory surfaced; sweaty caresses and someone's forehead resting between her breasts.

Something must have shown in her face, because he grinned and pulled her against his groin. She liked it—she liked that feeling a lot—it threw a tingle into her thighs and a heat into the space between her shoulder blades—but she raised a hand to push him away.

"Come on, no strings attached, just the way you like it?" He offered quickly. She glanced up at his thick neck, his desperate, pleading eyes, considering. "Shepard?"

"You got a lot of nerve, Lieutenant." He dropped his hands. "And I like that, but you know that would never work." But she pulled his head down anyways and kissed his thick jaw. "You don't do 'no-strings', big guy." She left one last kiss on his ear and left him. "Thanks for the beer! Safe flights!"

"You know where to find me though, right?" He shouted back as she backed away through the dancing crowd. She waved, and he waved, and he was gone.

Once she figured she was far enough away, she sighed.

Shit. It would always happen like that. Someone would always want to get close to her. James Clyden was a nice man, a good man. He was fun and lively, and damn was he attractive. But attractive and nice and fun and lively had turned out to be otherwise before. She took another swallow of his beer, and started looking around. It really was for his own good.

Nice guy like him shouldn't get stuck with a woman like her.

She leaned against a half wall that divided bar and dance floor from the restaurant. Alone, she grew cold, and took up an old habit of scanning the room. She was determined to get laid tonight.

Humans were no threat except as pick-pockets and lechers. Asari would always try to get too close. She hated the mental connection with them; they always seemed to know too much about her every time she experimented with asari. She hadn't spent much time around turians before, though she usually blamed that on a kind of cultural mistrust. The mix of races in this bar was relaxing though. Humans were dancing with asari and a few turians dotted the mix as well. Lots of options.

There were two young asari on the dance floor near her, and Shepard walked up to them.

"Greetings." She said openly, a smile on her face.

One smiled and ran a hand down her arm, apparently in greeting. The other nodded; less friendly.

"My name's Shepard. I was wondering if you could do me a favor?" She asked, keeping the smile on her face.

"I am Herella. This is Myar. What do you need?" The one who touched her smiled, hips swaying to the music.

"Could you take a message to my friend?" Shepard took the friendly one's hand and turned her to scout out Clyden. "He's the big human in Alliance fatigues. He's a good friend of mine, but he wants something from me that I can't give him. I was wondering if you would just tell him that Ginny is sorry?"

Herella turned back to her, keeping their hands joined. "Of course. Would you like me to tell him goodbye, too?"

"What?" Shepard asked.

"Well, you are running away from him, aren't you?"

Shepard nodded. A chill ran down her spine at the asari's words. She felt the urge to buck, respond with violence, but at the strangely piercing gaze that caught her, she calmed. Okay, she was running. Was she really that obvious? She took a deep breath as she held an uncomfortably long look with the Herella. "Yeah. I guess I am." She paused. "If he needs to hear it, tell him." Herella nodded, and stepped away, pulling Myar with her.

The quiet asari waved, as her friend pulled her away, bright eyes spearing Shepard. She was rooted to the spot until those eyes were gone. Was she really that obvious?

No. Shepard doesn't run; Shepard stands her ground.

She turned and retreated to her previous position between dance floor, bar, and restaurant. She startled herself when she remembered she had a beer in her hand, and surprised herself when she took a sip and realized it was still nice and cold.

Seemed like days since she had walked away from Clyden already. That had to be a good sign, right? Already moving on to the next phase of her life, the next big thing. This post on the new ship—the Normandy, she thought it was called—would give her some great opportunities, she was thrilled to be posted with Anderson, and to be something like second in command.

But she sipped her beer and looked for someone to escape with. She refused to let her last night of freedom turn into a disaster. Or self-reflection, as she realized she was mulling over her beer.

Luckily, something caught her eyes. Two turians stood up in the restaurant. They clasped forearms. Soldiers. Both were wearing light armor, had pistols on their hips. The darker one made a gesture towards the bar near where she was standing, and the lighter one shook his head and stalked away.

Shepard turned away, waited for the dark turian to pass, and then watched as he waded through the crowd, at least a head taller than everyone else there. When he settled at the bar to order a drink, she pushed off the wall and headed towards him emptying her beer.

He looked interesting.

She gently slid her hips into the space between him and the human woman next to him, and slowly pressed her way to the bar. She ignored a huff from the woman, and ordered a new beer.

When the bartended dropped another in front of her hand, he spoke.

"What are you doing?" His voice was calculating, slow, like she was a child with a hand stuck in the cookie jar. She met his eyes, and then slowly brought the bottle to her lips, hoping she was daring him to comment. When he didn't, she dropped the bottle back to the bar.

"Name's Ginny." She offered a handshake, and then belatedly wondered if the turian was familiar with the human gesture. He didn't move for a moment, but then the hard plates on his face shifted into an incredibly human expression, one she recognized. She couldn't look away from his face, fascinated. The plates on his face where a human's eyebrows would be tilted and shifted, one raising one falling, the one mandible quirked up a bit, and as he placed a warm hand into hers she felt her alcohol buzz settle back into her thighs.

"Pleasant to meet you, Ginny." His eyes darted down and then back up. She narrowed her eyes. He just checked her out. She hoped that the Alliance military digs weren't an immediate turnoff.

"You have a name?" She asked when he was silently staring at her for just a bit too long.

He took a sip of his drink and then answered. "Yes. Not sure you should have it, though." She was about to be taken aback and move on to another likely companion for the night, but then she realized that the parted mouth was a grin. His sharp, predatory teeth gleamed in the colored lights of the bar and she relaxed. She settled herself so that she was leaning on the bar and facing him.

"Well, what do I have to do to earn it?"

He laughed, and she decided that the sound was delicious. It was a deep grumble, and a bright chuckle at the same time. She could feel the sound in her ribcage above the boom of the bass in the music and her pulse in her pelvis.

"I don't know, Ginny. What can you do?" Now it was velvet, curling around her ears and down her neck. She knew this feeling. She knew this feeling and she liked it.

"Well," she slipped a hand up his arm and onto the soft body suit beneath the armor plates there. "That really depends on how long you want to stay in this bar."

His mouth was open just a little bit, those mandibles tilted at mismatched angles, and as she studied his face, she realized he was scarred just like she was. The plates on the left side of his face were broken and jagged beneath the white markings that curled around his deep black eyes. Slowly, he smiled again, tilted his head down to her level, which was quite a ways down. He was taller than Clyden was, but narrower, and as small as Clyden had made her feel, this sharp alien made her feel delicate. Some primal urge was pushing her to test him. To make him fight, and then to make him fuck.

"I want to buy you at least one more drink." She grinned. Yes, she knew this feeling.


	2. Chapter 2

She let him order another round, and then let him draw her away from the bar. His long arm went around her back and three long fingers were possessive and hot on her ribs. He led her to a quieter corner of the bar and they found a place to lean against the wall. While he was still, eyes quick and calculating, Shepard was on her fourth or fifth beer, and was having a hard time keeping her head above the soothing, smooth sensations of being almost drunk. She decided to let go of it, and let her hips sway to the music, alternately watching her nameless turian and the dancing, swaying, hot bodies on the dance floor. She felt hot herself, and she let her head twist and turn, wishing her fatigues had a button or a clasp she could undo, but the jumpsuit was one piece, form fitting, stifling.

"What brought you here tonight, Shepard?" He asked. She almost answered, and then froze. The feeling was gone. It was replaced by something else. She surrendered to training instead now. She snapped her eyes to him, he looked calm, standing a bit away from the wall, arms crossed, half empty drink in one hand.

She brought her head up, slammed her shoulder into the center of his chest, right into his high center of gravity, and slammed him back against the wall. With him in his armor it only made a light thud, and surely did no damage, but she counted on it getting her point across. She hadn't brought her sidearm, just a large knife sheathed in the back of her belt, so she pressed a hand up under his chin, pressed her thumb where a human's jugular would be, and brought herself as close to his face as possible.

"Who the fuck are you?" She hissed. For two seconds, she considered going to find Clyden just to take his pistol and point it at the him, but she imagined that a standoff between a human female and a large turian in the middle of the bar would not be a good way to spend her last night before her new assignment, so she simply counted on the fact that they were surrounded by beings to prevent him from pulling anything on her here.

Before those two seconds of thought were over, he laughed again, and the velvet of his voice confused her. Her body liked that sound, but her mind didn't trust him anymore, and the hot rage that had slammed him into the wall pressed her hand sharper into his neck.

He brought up a hand and she almost threw up a fist to block it, before she realized that he had placed it on top of her head, his talons just resting on top of her hair. Gentle.

"I'll admit, that was a slip on my part. But it must be fate." He ran his hand down the side of her face and while that would have flipped a switch of desire on her before, now it enraged her. She swept her hand up and beat his arm away from her face and grabbed the cowl of his armor and pulled him down to her level.

"Fucking explain. Now." She used the officer voice she had been perfecting for years and it seemed to work. He held up his three fingered hands in the universal signal of submission, ducked his head and met her eyes.

She dropped him, and crossed her arms behind her back. The posture was both reminiscent of 'at-ease' and brought her hands where she could rest one on the handle of her knife.

"My name is Nihlus Kryik. I'm a Spectre." He paused as if waiting for her to respond with some sort of glowing praise. Her previous interest had definitely taken a turn. When she didn't respond, he kept talking. "You are my next assignment."

"Bullshit." She cut out.

"It's true."

"I know my next assignment. It has shit-all to do with a spectre. Just a routine shakedown."

"That… is correct. As far as you should know. Perhaps we should leave? There are many ears around."

"I'm not going anywhere with you until you say something that makes me trust you." He gritted his teeth, jutted his jaw forward, and cocked his head to the side.

"You're assigned to the SSV Normandy, Alliance vessel. It has an experimental drive core and state-of-the art stealth systems." She didn't respond so he continued. "Your CO is David Anderson. Your destination is Eden Prime."

"God damnit."

"Do you believe me yet?"

"What the hell is there to believe? Fucking…" She threw her hands down and got in his face again. "Why couldn't you have just kept your mouth shut, let me take you to some hotel room and fuck you?" He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, and she could see the bright points of his teeth glinting in the dim lighting. He shut it again, and then shrugged.

"Well, we can still do that, if you really want." He sounded apologetic, and for some reason it made her laugh. She ran her hand through her hair. It was mussed from where he touched it, and the thought made her warm again, brought that pleasant pressure back to her inner thighs. God, she could be stupid sometimes.

"Yeah, sure, maybe if you let me go get my guns first." She said it as a joke, still feeling a little self-deprecating for having not planned for this; but what he did next threw her for a loop.

"You can take mine." He pulled the weapon from its holster and offered it to her, grip first. She met his eyes again, and she got the impression that she was some sort of wild animal to him, untamed and unpredictable. He was doing anything to show her that he was trustworthy, and as she met those green on black eyes again, she got this feeling. It was different than the one that settled in her hips and thighs, different than the one that made her slam him against the wall. It curled in her chest and settled down, like something warm and hopeful. She liked it even though she didn't want to.

She took the weapon and compulsively checked the heatsink, tucked it into her belt. She shifted nervously, her legs were tingling. She didn't want to be standing still. He had turned on her fight or flight response, and she was itching for… something.

"Okay." She placed her hands at her hips, pistol in easy reach. "What do you mean I'm your assignment?" He finally moved from where she had thrown him into the wall and snaked that arm around her again.

"We should walk." She followed, hand on the sidearm.

They ended up outside the bar in a quiet but still populated street. He stopped at a terminal to call a skycar, and she nodded him in. Once they were both seated in the vehicle, he turned to her and spoke, ignoring the hand she kept planted on the gun.

"You're my next assignment. The shakedown is a cover. Something happened on Eden Prime."

"What happened?"

"That I don't know yet. I'm briefed in the morning before we ship out."

"Okay. But you still haven't told me what this has to do with me. I'm just assigned to the Normandy. And why is the council sending a Spectre?"

"I requested you."

"For what? A team?"

"Not quite." He spoke slowly. That velvet was hard to resist again. But something told her to trust him. To believe him. It was something in the frustration he showed with having to explain it, and that look he gave her when she first walked up to him. And then there was that feeling his eyes gave her.

But then she made herself repeat something; she walked up to him. He didn't seek her out and start naming classified information. Which she decided leant him some credence. As much as her hackles were still raised, she was sickeningly curious.

"I can't believe you walked up to me." He laughed as he spoke her thoughts out loud. "I just got the confirmation that I was going to Eden Prime to evaluate you. And you walked up to me." His laughter was somehow infectious. She chuckled and removed her hand from the pistol. She knew how stupid it was as soon as she did it, but he didn't make a move—at least not the one she warily expected. His hand landed on her thigh and he ducked his head to hers.

"You're a candidate for Spectre status. I am to evaluate you."

She sat dumbstruck for a moment. She realized how close his face was to hers and one thought overrode the one she distantly remembered should be foremost.

"So… Does that mean I can't sleep with you now? Conflict of interest?" She belatedly realized that those four or five beers were probably still making their effects known, but still sat flush against the seat of the car. She did want him.

"I can't say that I would mind." His hand crawled higher so that it rested against her hip.

"I'll keep it a secret if you will." She muttered.

AN: Please review? Pls?


	3. Chapter 3

His hotel room was pretty normal. Bland bed, bland walls, utilitarian bathroom. However, there was an excellent view of the city. And this was where Shepard went to stand.

"Nice view you've got here." The lights of the city sparkled during the dark cycle, although the traffic of skycars and other comings and goings kept everything bright and active.

"Shepard," he accused her with her name, and she turned away from the window. "I think that's a clichéd saying for any species." She laughed in response. He stepped closer and braced his hands upon the windowsill on either side of her. There was that feeling. Bright as a star it settled between her thighs and made her gasp.

"Well, cliché or not, what did you bring me here for?" She tilted her head up to him. She knew next to nothing about how turian love-making worked, but he seemed ready to go—no anticipation—so she happily realized she would be following instead of leading tonight. A pleasant heat seemed to settle in her back between her shoulder blades.

He sighed gently and pressed his forehead against hers. She tingled as she felt his large, hot hands slide up her arms, she couldn't stop a small, humming moan as his hands slid onto her neck, and she realized she was grasping for his waist, pulling him closer.

As his hips shifted to rest against hers, pinning her pleasantly between the wall and his solid heat. She groaned and shifted against him, a little surprised at how vocal she was being, but all of her senses were on edge; he hadn't even kissed her, they were both still fully clothed—he was even still completely encased in his armor—and she was already whimpering and moaning like there was electricity flowing through her as he gently stroked her body. He ran his talons along her clothed limbs and she shivered. Even his quickening exhalations across her eyelids made her shiver, and she squirmed her hips against his hips.

"Your species is so soft." He spoke in slight amazement as he pressed his hands against her breasts, and she accidentally smacked her head against the plasteel window as the sensation set her skin on fire. God, his hands were everywhere, pressing on her and squeezing her arms and her thighs.

"No we're not," she was embarrassed at how breathy her voice came out, "you're just built like a freaking tank." She didn't want to admit that she felt like prey to him, but she felt somehow vulnerable—like she was about to be consumed. As a hum started deep in his chest, she smiled.

"You like it though." his voice was gruff as he stroked her arms. She realized he was trying to still her hands on him as they circled a small strip of hot flesh she could feel through his bodysuit between plates of armor. Apparently that was a sensitive location, maybe even ticklish, and the thought made her smile. She wondered what his skin felt like, how much of him was hard carapace like the plates on his face. She wondered where he was soft like she was.

"Don't like your armor." She pressed him away and decided to go straight for the clasp on her fatigues and get free of them. She toed open the latches on her boots as she peeled her arms from the sleeves. He reached down to push the suit down her hips for her when it bunched at her waist. His talons were obviously dulled, but still scratched enough to leave trails like plasma burns down her ribs and the sides of her bare breasts. He ducked his head down and brushed his mouth against hers. She felt a hot, moist lick against her bottom lip and opened her mouth to him.

It was strange; she had never kissed someone who didn't have lips, but he seemed to know what he was doing, and his tongue followed a path around hers that she knew well. She moaned into his mouth and gasped as she felt the vibrations of a hum coming from his chest, the sound deep and throbbing against her nipples. She threw her arms around his neck to keep him in place, but he didn't stay. His head ducked down to her neck and those pointed teeth bit down lightly against the tendons beneath her ear.

Her head hit the window again as she let out a cry. It was primal, a sound of need, of want. The bite made her body throb. He growled in response and pulled her up pressing her bare skin against the cool plasteel behind them. She jumped as an edge of his armor caught her flesh, and pushed him away. She stumbled back barefoot to the floor, tripping on her boots.

"What? What's wrong?" His voice was husky, his eyes were different, and he threw his hands up again in that gesture from before, apparently trying to insist with body language that he wasn't a threat. He froze, panting slightly, his bright green eyes somehow clouded.

"Nothing! No, no, no. I just want your armor off!" She couldn't help but laugh, he looked so… taken aback. "I'm sorry." She came towards him again, and pulled his head down and kissed his face in an apology. "It's just that I'm already naked and you're still all suited up." He nodded, slowly and began to smile.

"Well, are you going to help me with that?" His chest puffed out a bit, and she laughed again.

She stepped forward and started with one hand, unlatching gloves and pulling them from his three fingers, inspecting them, touching them and turning them over in her own. The tops of his hands were all hard plating like his face, but his palm and the pads of his fingers were soft, tough flesh. His other hand caressed her hip, curled around her thigh and teased in her cleft.

A bracer fell to the ground, and she let out a moan as he pressed a finger against her clit. Once his upper arms were free she pulled the other had away from her clit, eliciting a small growl from him but she smirked as his eyes met her own. She lightly bit the tip of his finger before ungloving his other hand and unsnapping his shoulders and letting chest plates fall to the ground.

She shivered as she uncovered him just as he had helped unclothe her, she knelt and unbuckled greaves and thigh guards, unlatched his boots so that she could reach up and help peel down the under armor that he had already unfastened. As she pulled the black fabric down his torso and hips, she couldn't help but caress the surprising amount of soft, thick skin that she uncovered. There was more plain skin on his stomach than she had expected, and she ran her fingernails down his smooth sides and places wet, sloppy kisses against him. He was warm like velvet and she wanted to taste all of him.

When her tongue touched his skin, he let out a trilling noise that surprised her, and she looked up to see his head thrown back. His fingers were resting on her head, tangling her short hair up and feeding it through his hands.

She had to say, though, kneeling here before him—both completely unclothed—the braveness and gumption she had felt previously slowly pattered away. Something was rather…conspicuously missing.

"Nihlus?" She asked, running a hand down his torso to where she expected… well, some sort of genitalia to be.

"Hmm?" He didn't move, just scratched his talons against her scalp, and she shivered despite herself.

"I don't know… well, anything about turian anatomy," She tentatively placed another kiss above a ridge of thick carapace at his hip, "and I just… need to know… what do you need me to do?"

"Shh," he whispered, fingers brushing against her head, "Just… just keep doing that." She laughed, he sounded just like a human male in that moment. "Right, don't stop."

She complied pressing her tongue and lips against his flesh, experimenting as flesh rippled under her touch, trying to suck on a spot and see if it would like a mark—like a hickey on him. He bucked against her touch, and she regained some of her solid footing; she knew those reactions, those reflexes that pushed bodies together and made them pant and sweat. This was familiar again. She pushed him back against the bed, crawled over him, and pushed him to keep crawling backwards towards the pillows.

He moved under her with a wicked grin, his mandibles quivering, and she kept doing what she was doing. She placed those sloppy kisses against his neck and he gave her a small cry before turning his face back to hers and pulling her mouth to his for another one of those hot kisses, swirling his tongue around hers.

She realized that the two plates that met at the front of his pelvis slid apart, and he reached for his cock as it slipped out, stroking it lightly. Even though it was longer than that of a human male and the flesh was the same greyish red of his neck and sides, she knew what she was supposed to do again.

She raised up her hips and took his cock into her hand and lined him up at her entrance. Before she could sink down on him, though, he reached up and flipped her onto her back. She was too surprised to react, instead, she just watched as he rearranged her legs and carefully slid into her.

She was on fire, she was panting as his body pressed down on hers. It had been too long since her last shore leave and her last chance to find a willing body, and her breath was taken away as he filled her. He really was big, and it bordered on painful, but somehow he knew exactly how to move against her. She suddenly didn't want to be in control anymore. What he could do to her was probably infinitely more interesting and gratifying than what she could do here.

He placed his elbows on either side of her and pressed his forehead to hers he began thrusting into her. She wanted to keep her eyes open, she really did, but every time he pressed back into her and his stomach rested against hers, she felt every nerve ending overload. She pushed back up against him, she grabbed at his shoulders, digging into his skin to pull him closer.

His tongue was traveling down her neck, caressing her earlobe, and she realized she was speaking, chanting, calling out a litany of _Oh god,_ and _Please, more_ and _Yes, Yes, Yes _into his ear. She was about to be embarrassed at her own reaction—mewling in his grasp, crying, begging—until she realized that the thrumming purr in his chest was going again, he was panting into her mouth, eyes locked onto her own.

"You like it?" He asked, as he quickened his pace.

"Yes." Her voice squeaked out beneath his thrusts and she stretched up to kiss him again. "Yes." He nodded and kissed her again. Her body took over and her world narrowed to where his body met hers. Her muscles tightened around him and she began to tingle.

"I'm going to come." She confessed into his mouth. "God, Nihlus, I'm gonna come."

"Come." He breathed into her mouth. And she did, she surrendered to the need, to the begging, insistent need to release her body; she felt like it exploded. Her legs gripped him, and she felt a howl escape her. She gave up control of her body, her limbs, her sounds and let her orgasm sweep her down, bowl her over, make her weep. And he was still moving in her, desperately racing to finish, and she realized her hands were running over his fringe, urging him on with her lips on his neck, and suddenly he was gone from her, his cock was in his hand, and he was coming onto her stomach.

He looked back up at her face, and then lowered himself back onto her body, resting his forehead against her chest and curling his arms back around her.

"You walked up to me." He repeated. She laughed and continued to caress him.

"I guess I didn't know what I was getting myself into."


	4. Chapter 4

The collar of her fatigues didn't even come close to covering the turian shaped bite marks on her neck.

The seams of the suit that sat between her thighs irritated her sore skin.

She didn't have clean underwear.

But she felt so good. She felt so fucking _good._ She felt a little taller, a little less heavy; the day cycle of the citadel even seemed a little brighter, a little rosier.

The hotel room didn't have anything to dry her hair with other than a towel, so she wound the still wet strands into her standard high bun with the few pins she scavenged off of the floor beneath pieces of his armor.

Nihlus walked into the small bathroom and watched her finish putting her hair up. She didn't have any makeup, and she didn't have time to go back to the Normandy where all of her possessions had been stashed, so she would be attending her promotion ceremony in dirty socks, with no underwear, no makeup, and a jury-rigged bun with approximately three pins.

"Good morning." She smiled at him through the mirror and as she finished her pinning, he reached to her neck, mandibles held tight to his face. "That… is obviously turian." He said with a frown on his face.

"So what?" She shrugged. "I have to go to this promotion ceremony, and they have new dress blues for me there. They should cover it." She turned towards him and leaned against the counter. "If it needs to be covered."

He tilted his head a little at the challenge, but then shook his head.

"Before I'm even supposed to have met you? Even Spectres have a little accountability. Think about it, if I show up for a mission to evaluate a recruit _I_ requested and she is covered in turian bite marks?" She laughed.

"Fair point. I suppose it is pretty incriminating for something that shouldn't have happened."

She pushed past him into the room and sat on the disheveled bed to don her socks and boots.

"I wouldn't say that." He purred from the bathroom doorway. She looked up sharply.

"I was just looking to get laid." She said, hopefully by way of explanation. "I try not to sleep with team members, and I needed… you know, something before what I thought would be a boring as hell shakedown. And the sex was great," _Really great,_ "So I got what I was looking for, and I'm not looking for anything else."

She tried very hard not to show on her face the memories that flashed into her mind. _Your head against my chest as we lay breathless._ She tried not to smile when she remembered how well she slept. She had tried to get up and leave, go back to the ship, get her own room, something, but then he had pulled her back down into the bed, tugged her back to his chest, and fallen asleep with his face buried in her neck.

"I think this is what's called 'mixed signals', Shepard." He said quietly.

She stood, toed the latches shut on her boots, and walked over to kiss him.

"You think what you have to." She turned go, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"I'll be at your ceremony."

"Then I'll see you there. Have I met you before, though? Or is this supposed to be hush-hush?" She asked, probably a little too sharply, but he just leaned down to kiss her again, and one of his mandibles twitched a little higher than the other.

"Hush-hush for now."

What an appeasing answer.

She hadn't noticed him until the end of the ceremony. He sat somewhere near the back, and then left before the short ceremony was over. Apparently he only planned on stopping by for a bit; but once she had noticed the tall fringe and white markings on his face, she'd been distracted the rest of the day going through the motions of paperwork after the ceremony and greeting the few well-wishers and dignitaries aiming to be seen at an Alliance ceremony.

She was busy. Everything felt like it was moving a bit too fast. She was just promoted, sent to a brand new state of the art ship, strange feelings for a turian—of all things. As much as she had been gunning for the time away from a mission, she was suddenly longing for the simplicity of giving away orders, being obeyed, completing a mission. Especially since she couldn't get her emotions to fall in line like well-trained soldiers. All she could think about was that stupid alien and his damn purring kisses.

So when the C-Sec elevator to the docking bays opened to his smirking mandibles, she suddenly felt as though she'd accidentally grabbed a set of shorted out wires. She wondered if it would be at all possible for them to get just unclothed enough to have a quickie in the elevator before it arrived at the Normandy's docking level.

But as the doors to the elevator began to automatically slide shut, she realized he had been staring knowingly at her for long enough for the automated doors to tell her to move on… she jumped and finally stepped into the elevator.

"Commander." He greeted, with a laugh evident in the subharmonics of his voice. She shoved his shoulder in retaliation as the doors slid shut. Once she heard the click, though, she jumped him.

She grabbed his neck above his hard cowl and pulled him down to her mouth. He reached his hands around to grab her ass and pulled her hips hard against him.

But again the hiss of the doors sounded, and she jumped away from him, stumbling on her feet from suddenly not being pressed against him. She ran the sleeve of her dress uniform over her mouth.

He gestured—very gallantly, she had to admit—indicating that she should exit the elevator first. She gave him a glare that she hoped wasn't too biting, and tugged her stiff jacket back down into place.  
Shepard started a bit when she realized that somehow Udina and Anderson had somehow beaten them up to the ship, and were standing chatting at the gangway to the Normandy.

She couldn't help the need to giggle, but covered it—she thought—well as she walked out of elevator.

"How did you get here so fast, Anderson?" She called out to the older man. She let herself grin, but tried very hard not to laugh. "Reporting for duty, sir." She gave him her best regulation salute. "Councilor."

"Shepard." The tight faced councilor nodded. "Nihlus."

"I just took the elevator, Commander. We'd been wondering when you would get here. Actually once the two of you board we're ready to ship out." He turned towards Nihlus. "I ah… see you've met Nihlus. Good to see you again" Although he held his hand out to the tall turian with confidence, Shepard caught a note of uncertainty that she couldn't quite place. She tried to reassure herself that he wasn't eyeing the spot on her neck covered in his obviously non-human bite marks.

"Indeed. We happened to meet on the elevator." Nihlus spoke quietly, somehow betraying nothing. She supposed that they had just happened to meet on the elevator…

"Well there really is no reason to waste more time, then is there?" Udina sputtered. As much as she hated this man, Shepard nodded.

"Absolutely. I'll see you on board." She nodded to both men and stepped into the airlock of the Normandy.

"While your councilor seemed not to notice anything, I believe your captain noticed how red your face was." He whispered once they were isolated in the airlock cycle. "Is that a normal human thing or is there any way you can turn it off?"

Shepard laughed and hid her face in her hands. God, her cheeks were hot. He placed a soothing hand on her head.

"Oh, I fucking wish I could turn it off."


	5. Chapter 5

Her team needed her. The Eden Prime mission was quickly turning into a nightmare; just an absolute clusterfuck. She had already lost one man, a good soldier who had family at home, and she wasn't planning on letting anything happen to Alenko, or now this Williams.

But she had a problem. Once they rounded the top of the last steps to the spaceport platform, she noticed a body that was bigger than either the Geth or the destroyed humanoid forms of the Husks that had been coming at them since they made groundfall.

How was she supposed to handle this? She didn't even realize… that she could feel this. Right now of all times, in the middle of a shitstorm of a mission, she felt like a trap door had opened up beneath her feet.

There was a turian body on the ground with a conspicuous bullet wound in the back of his head. She didn't… she couldn't… she couldn't turn him over, she didn't want to see if the face she had kissed just this morning in a back hallway on the Normandy was ruined by a vicious exit wound. But there was so much blood; the ground was blue all around him.

She had a strange feeling that Williams was speaking though, and forced herself to focus; there were still threats. Geth everywhere. Stay in the present.

But she needed to check his pulse; maybe he was still breathing, maybe they could apply some medi-gel and call for an evac. Although the objective was priority, any request would be denied. But there was so much blood…

She was alone, and he was alone. This was it for him. That one last crooked smirk as he left her with one last nip on her cheek was really the last. That exciting future he carried with him just disappeared.

She heard shuffling from behind a set of crates and raised her pistol. It was just a dockworker, so she turned away, back to where Nihlus was collapsed. One of her team could deal with him.

Her ears were ringing. Where did the ground underneath her feet go?

"Commander?"

Who did this?

"Commander?"

Who did this to him?

"Commander Shepard?" Alenko was touching her shoulder. She grabbed his hand and twisted it behind his back and wrenched it up—hard. Too hard. The biotic yelped. She released him.

"Don't touch me." She hissed.

The dock worker was staring at her slack jawed. His eyes were sunken and he looked a little high. He was probably sleeping of some sort of stim withdrawal.

"You. Who shot the turian? It's a pistol wound, medium caliber. You wouldn't happen to have a handgun on you, would you?" She didn't quite connect that she was accusing a civilian of having murdered a Spectre, but she really just wanted to push him, so she stepped into the man's space.

"No! No, no, way. It was another fucking turian!" It seemed to work. She needed to know what this man knew.

"What was his name?"

"Uh… look lady, I don't remember… I mean…" He stuttered with a shrug. She didn't buy it for a second.

"What was his fucking name?" She hissed. Luckily the man was fairly short and she could stare him in the eye.

"S—Saren! Something like Saren!"

"Good."

Bastard. Luckily, one thing would come out okay. If her mission was to bring Saren in, she would do it however the fuck she deemed best. And she was coming up with some ideas right now.

"Move out." She sent Alenko and Williams ahead, and looked back at Nihlus.

"I guess this is it." She whispered.

She heard weapons fire and moved to back up her team. She was suddenly glad that her helmet covered most of her face; she had no doubt that her cheeks were red again. She sniffed back tears she didn't realize she had shed and pulled out her rifle.


	6. Chapter 6

What was she supposed to do with this weight? She felt like a giant walking holo-sign that said _"Hi, I'm not okay." _She knew she was broadcasting her grief to the world but she could only hold but so much of it back. She knew that no one knew what exactly had happened; even Alenko and Williams only knew that something or some combination of the things that had happened planetside had affected her. Alenko had tried to say something about losing Jenkins, and Shepard had just nodded. She knew she should have felt worse about losing a team member on a mission, but she just felt… somehow broken.

She didn't realize she had felt so strongly for Nihlus until she saw him lying awkwardly in a puddle of his own blood and all she could think about was how she'd never get to actually go on a mission with him. How she wouldn't get to lie in bed curled in his arms again, and how she'd never get to see what happened when they didn't need to be hush-hush anymore.

She would never get to know.

That was what hurt the most. It was just a giant question mark about what could have been. It seemed somehow even more unfair that it seemed he was interested in finding out what would happen between them too. She hadn't found herself that absorbed in a relationship in a long time. She'd tried to make a point of avoiding others like that.

Although, it wasn't even a relationship. She had picked him up in a bar, they had fucked, it was great, they'd flirted, and engaged in some more heavy petting before he was… taken down, but that promise of something more had been there from the beginning. They had definitely had… something.

And no one even knew what she was grieving. She just had to make sure she looked like she could still do her job. It certainly helped that she now had even more reason to find Saren.

As much as she wanted to hole up alone somewhere and mourn Nihlus' loss and her own, she was here, running around the citadel, taking care of business, gathering information.

So she was a little embarrassed when she walked into the Citadel Tower and again found herself staring at an encounter between two turians, one older in dress armor, and the younger in C-Sec blues. The younger male seemed pissed, and as her ears tuned in to their conversation, she realized that they were talking about Saren. She couldn't help her obvious eavesdropping, now. She was blatantly staring.

When the older turian turned away, she walked the short distance to the younger turian and prepared to introduce herself, but he had already noticed her, called her name, and introduced himself.

"Commander Shepard, I'm Garrus Vakarian." Did every turian on the Citadel know her by sight? "I'm the C-Sec officer in charge of the investigation into Saren." Apparently so.

But she liked something about him, she realized as he explained the leads he'd been following. It was something about his righteous anger. He seemed to be chomping at some invisible bit, straining to do what he believed was right. She promised him to follow up his leads; and she realized as she said it that she turned it into a vow not only because she needed to do it for herself, but because she wanted to do it for this frustrated young officer who knew what was _right._

So when she followed his info on the quarian to a med clinic, saw him sneaking around the counter with a turian smirk on his face she really wanted to know how this would play out. The thugs noticed Shepard and her team walk in the door, pulled a gun on her, and the good doctor's captor suddenly went down with a hole in his head, she was a little taken aback.

Not in a bad way, in fact she couldn't keep the smile off of her face, even as she returned fire to the other men holding the doctor hostage. Maybe he wasn't as constrained as she thought earlier. What a surprise. That was a fucking risky shot to take.

Without hesitation she welcomed him to the team and proclaimed he was only interested in stopping Saren.

Which she realized would be just fine.


	7. Chapter 7

AN: Editing was heaviest from here on out if anyone's keeping track. This is a big chapter after two shorties.

Night cycle on the Normandy was too quiet. She used to think that she hated not having privacy in crew quarters, used to hate having to bunk with at least one other person, hearing someone person snore, having to wake up when they rolled out of the bunk above. She hated even more when she had to rotate bunk shifts; hated knowing that her bed was also someone else's when she wasn't in it. A selfish part of her knew that space was a premium on starships, weight limits to break atmo restricted their size, kept layouts and crew bunks minimal—knew, but didn't care. Crews sleeping in close proximity to each other was a sacrifice that had to be made in order to make space travel possible.

Until now, however, she had considered it a necessary evil.

Now, she lay curled into herself in what she convinced herself should have been Anderson's bunk—a space—a whole _room_ that was just hers, it was part office, part bunk and also had several extra computer terminals. She didn't know what to do with it. Her one half-empty duffle had been plunked on the desk in the center of the room, and she realized she was completely alone.

There was no one to talk to, no one to confess to, and not even anyone with whom she could distract herself from the void she felt. She was about to be sucked down, and she felt cagey, couldn't stop rubbing her bare feet against the too short metal footboard of the bunk.

It was maybe an hour and a half into the night cycle and the last time she had fallen asleep she was in a disheveled hotel room with Nihlus.

She had nothing. She knew nothing about him and she felt like she needed to be screaming about her loss. She realized her heart was racing and she was trying to make herself cry. She resisted. She wasn't sure if she deserved it.

She didn't know if he had a wife—a mate?—who was grieving him somewhere, maybe back on Palaven. She didn't know who his friends were: she really knew nothing about him. Didn't know who his parents were, didn't know what he liked to do, where he had come from, how he became a Spectre, why he was interested in her. She had nothing. Why the fuck had this happened? Because Saren was on some crusade? Nihlus was in the way? He left her with nothing of him.

Nothing.

She had nothing, and the room was too fucking empty, and it was too fucking quiet, and she felt like she was going to lose her mind.

She crawled out of bed, and stepped into the head. The tiny mirror showed her that something like thirty-nine hours without sleep had done nothing good to the post-sex glow Nihlus had left her with.

She ran a finger over the dark circles under her eyes, and tried to calm the shaky feeling in her chest. But she remembered the kiss he had placed on her neck while she was pinning up her hair, and the empty, cold room in the mirror behind her broke her down.

The tears she had been refusing to acknowledge suddenly broke over the edge of her eyes and with a sob, she rested her head on the mirror.

She was just fucking alone, and for the first time in a long, _long_ time she didn't want to be. She'd spent too long avoiding any meaningful contact, and Nihlus had given her an idea of something she didn't realize she could even be missing.

She wanted to call her mom, she realized. That thought threw another sob through her body and she sunk to the floor. She hadn't spoken to her mother in… years. She called her mother up on her twenty-fifth birthday, and she didn't think about the strained relationship again until just now. Was she really just keeping a safe distance—a professional distance—between herself and everyone she cared about? Was it really only about avoiding a conflict of interest between herself and her Alliance captain mother? Or was it just easier when you alienated everyone who could possibly get close enough to see through the actions, see past the Commander?

She thought about what her mother would say.

_"Sitting on the floor of the head in the captain's quarters, crying over guilt? Well, you _are_ in the captain's quarter now, that's all you're going to get. Bad things happen. You've got to deal with it, Virginia. Get up, wash your face and get over this. People are counting on you. Get over yourself, and don't let them down."_

Shepard scrubbed her hands over her eyes. Pushed a sob down. She heaved herself up and turned on the cold water in the tiny sink.

"Yes, mom." She washed her face as dutifully as if her mother were actually standing at parade rest over her.

She wasn't sure how to just get over it. She wasn't sure it was going to work like that, but she could already tell waiting around alone wasn't going to help. So she made sure her face was dry, shoved her boots back on, and stepped outside into the main hold. It was empty, Alenko was gone, and no one was sitting at the mess table. Dr. Chakwas wasn't in the MedBay, apparently the doctor had already gone to bunk for the night. She didn't want to head up to the command deck; didn't want to possibly face Pressley or the other officers on duty at night.

She laughed, realized how pathetic she was being. Still, the elevator down to the cargo hold was calling to her. Weapons and equipment were stashed down there; if nothing else she could pull out her pistol and clean and remod it. In fact, that sounded like the best alternative to sleeping.

After the painfully slow elevator ride, she walked over to her cabinet and retrieved her Stiletto and took it over to William's work bench.

She occupied herself with field stripping the pistol and cleaning it until it was immaculate. The contacts for the trigger assembly was getting sticky, gummed up with some sort of residue, and the whole casing of the gun had to come apart to clean it. By the time she had it back together, she realized it was close to 0200 hours, and her head was vaguely spinning from fatigue.

However that big empty cabin upstairs was not where she wanted to be. The runabout that the Normandy came equipped with—the Mako-was sitting parked and strapped down to the floor on the opposite wall of the hold. It was calling to her. She set the pistol back into her locker and walked to the vehicle. The hatch door swung open with a quiet hiss of hydraulics, and she crawled into the wide bunk seat along the side of the inner compartment.

This felt better. She laid down across the bench seat, and curled her arms around herself.

God, she felt better with something to do, but now she just felt so alone. Why in the hell was this bothering her all of a sudden? She'd always slept alone, what was the problem?

She cursed to herself as the tears started again. This wasn't like her. This weakness was disgusting. She needed something else, she needed to feel something besides empty. She threw a punch into the cabin wall. The action felt good. The pain in her fist felt good. She threw another punch and let herself spew curses until she started feeling better.

She started to worry that it might take a while.

And then the hatch opened. Her fist was at the ready but when she realized she recognized the figure that opened it she was suddenly awkward. She dropped her hands and sat back down on the bench.

"Sorry! Sorry, you scared me. I didn't mean to…" She trailed off when she realized her voice sounded like tears. Her stupid throat was tight. She quickly wiped her face. "Shit." She dropped her head between her knees.

"You didn't actually hit me." Garrus stood awkwardly outside of the Mako. He was very carefully not looking at her. "So. I take it you're not… looking for company… down here in the runabout… in the middle of the night cycle… are you?"

"No. Not exactly." She answered. She couldn't look up at him.

"Right. Well, I was going to come down and check out the equipment down here and make sure everything was… running smoothly. So, I'll be out here… If you need any…" He was rambling. "But I did want to check out the Mako, I've never seen this model runabout in person before." And now he was trying to start a conversation.

"Why aren't you asleep?" She asked quietly, thankful that her voice seemed to sound much more normal now.

"I... don't think turians need quite as much sleep as humans do, Commander."

"Oh."

"Are… you okay?" She snorted at his question. She couldn't answer that. She was supposed to be the captain. The CO. She's supposed to be in charge. So, she deflected.

"What made you want to leave C-Sec?" She asked instead. He seemed to take a moment to process what she had asked before he finally answered.

"Well," He took a step into the Mako and settle himself into the driver's seat. "There were a couple of reasons. The bureaucracy, the red tape, the technicalities every time you think you've got a criminal. Just… frustrated, unable to do my job."

"How so?" She crawled into the passenger seat next to him.

"C-Sec has rules. Rules all day long. And C-Sec's rules are not always conducive to C-Sec's stated mission. They have to always protect civillians. Protecting every single life takes priority over saving more lives in the long run. You're not allowed to make decisions. It's all protocol. I joined because I wanted to do good. I saw so many problems in the world, but the longer I was there, the more sure I was that it just wasn't for me. Seems to me you're offering a pretty good alternative."

She rested her head back on the seat of the runabout. Finally there was someone talking. Someone was here to distract her. And he seemed so willing to just talk as long as she asked him questions every now and then. Eventually she traded some stories back about missions she had been on in exchange for crimes he had solved, cases gone bad. But mostly, she just laid her head back and let his deep, rumbly voice distract her while she closed her eyes.

There was something she really liked about his voice. That multi-tonal thing the turians had going on was surprisingly nice. It reminded her of the way the cat she'd sometimes had as a kid had purred as he napped in the sunshine. It was very soothing.

She was glad that this man was so eager to come along with her. He seemed like someone who could be an excellent ally. The whole turian thing was a little complicated, what with the First Contact War issue and all of the resulting fallout. However, Shepard had always been one to look at results as opposed to expectations. If Garrus could help her take down Saren, he would be welcome on her ship any day. She took a deep breath and let it out. Hell, he distracted her from the self-pity she couldn't escape on her own, and she couldn't say how grateful she was that someone had sought her out. He had even asked if she was okay.

"…down here. And I didn't really think that the Mako was supposed to be making… well banging noises, especially since it looks like it's brand new—Commander?" he very tentatively placed a hand on her elbow.

"Yeah Garrus?" She must have drifted off finally, because she realized she had no idea what he was talking about.

"What happened?"

"What?" She asked, coming back to alertness. She picked her heavy head up from the seat.

"Why are you hitting things and crying?" He asked.

Well that was fucking blunt. He was staring straight at her, which was not at all okay with her. There was something oddly comforting in those eyes, an intensity that… that pissed her off.

Oh, mother fucker. Of course. Shepard let herself get distracted again. She was about to hit rock bottom.

Way to forget that the former C-Sec officer—the fucking investigator—is trained in interrogation. Of course he knows ways to manipulate people into giving him information. So of course he'll get her nice and distracted, make her thing he's harmless, and then play kind and caring. But she didn't believe in kind and caring for no reason. Everyone wants something from someone else, so of course he wants to know why she's crying and punching things. That's just information for an arsenal, right?

She lets one pretty face get to her, shit goes down, and she's a mess. Not thinking straight. This was why she set her rules in place to begin with. Fraternization was frowned upon for a reason. It complicates things, and Shepard had gone and broken Shepard's rule one from day one; keep your distance. Don't let anyone get close to your soft spots, and then no one can reach them.

She needed to sleep. Maybe she would actually be able to sleep now that she was pissed.

"Fuck." She got up to leave the Mako and stomp back to the elevator.

"Oh… no. Wait! Wait, wait wait." He called, scrambling to follow her.

"Why? Why should I wait? So you can keep interrogating me?" She was very carefully not shouting, even though she wanted to. And maybe 'interrogating' was a strong word. It really was only one question, and he didn't seem to be pushing it anymore… but still. She had decided that it was too far out of line for someone who was a subordinate—albeit an unconventional one.

"That wasn't what I… No, Commander that's not what I was trying to do." He held his hands out palms down, trying to placate her. "I just… you were… I had to do something." He finished a little lamely, shrugged.

"I know that. I know I was upset, thank you." God, this was exhausting. "I… but it's not something I want to talk about." She turned to go, but rounded back on him. "And if you ever try something like that on me like that again, I will not hesitate to push your ass out of the nearest airlock."

"Absolutely." He was standing at attention as she railed at him.

"I don't know how things are run on turian ships, but this is my ship, this is my command, and I will be in charge. We can talk and laugh and crack jokes whenever we're off duty and that is fine. But my personal life will be my own, and that is not your place. That is no one's place. Is that understood, Officer Vakarian?"

"Understood, ma'am." He nodded curtly, staring just to the side of her head. And she left.

Upstairs, she shucked off her boots under her bunk and lay down. Luckily for her, even with the Normandy's FTL drive, a long series of relay jumps meant it would be sometime in the afternoon before the Normandy arrived at Artemis Tau. She would have plenty of time to sleep before she needed to be ready for a mission groundside to find this asari scientist.

She curled into herself, and exhaled a deep sigh, releasing the tension she had gathered up to reprimand Garrus. She felt like shit for having to do that, but she felt that she did have to. She couldn't have him thinking she was touchy-feely, or easy to manipulate.

She scoffed to herself though as she realized that she really did want to lay her problems on someone, though. She'd never had an easy time figuring out the difference between having a friend and having a liability, though. Too many people she'd considered friends had turned out to be anything but, had volunteered bad information to superiors, gossiped, told lies, used her. She had always either had bad taste in friends and lovers or… or people had something to gain from Hannah Shepard's daughter, from the soldier who survived Akuze.

The turian did seem like a bit of an awkward paladin type character. And she went and flew off the handle for him giving a shit about her. Another flavor of guilt settled in her gut. Why couldn't he have just kept talking about whatever? Why couldn't she have just handled the question without a bout of rage and ego?

She sighed. This really was too much going on. And she still couldn't sleep.

She might as well go see if Vakarian was still interested in being a confidante now that she had told him off. She figured a genuine apology might get her somewhere and diligently tried to dig one out of her brain.

She did feel bad…

This time she didn't bother with the shoes, just crawled back out of her bed, padded down to the elevator. When it opened at the bottom floor, she suddenly felt like she shouldn't be here. She felt like an intruder, and she didn't like it.

Garrus was typing away at the portable terminal next to the Mako. The only sound was his talons clicking away at the data terminal.

"Hey." She said, and then instantly wanted to kick herself. That was not professional at all. Fuck. Nothing tonight was going the way she wanted it.

"Hey." He replied—without turning around, she noticed with no lack of chagrin. And that lovely dual toned voice of his was clipped and tight. Great. Fuck. She had no idea how to apologize to him. She felt somewhat justified in her actions… but only somewhat.

"I came down to apologize to you." He turned around, finally, and placed his folded hands behind his back. She realized that had she not just upbraided him less than quarter of an hour ago, he would have crossed his arms. Maybe smirked and gloated. But he was clearly not pleased to see her right now as it stood.

"Just because I'm technically the commanding officer here, doesn't mean that I had a right to speak to you like I did." She began. She took another deep breath, and kept going; his pinprick bright eyes were centered on her. "This is obviously not a typical mission. You're not Alliance personnel. You're here because you wanted to be—because I _asked_ you to be here. I haven't given you reason to think I'd be running my ship that tight anyways, so I apologize for flying off the handle like that. That's not who I would like to be, nor what I would like you to think of me." He shifted from foot to foot, and suddenly wouldn't meet her eye.

"I ah… just assumed that I asked a question that I shouldn't have."

"It's one I've been trying to… avoid. And it's been a very long day." She nodded and stepped closer off of the edge of the center ramp. "It's probably a good question. A very good question. I'm surprised more people aren't asking me, since I don't think I've been doing a very good…" She shook her head. "I've been doing a very _bad_ job of keeping my shit together." She took a seat under the still open hatch of the Mako.

"So… If I ask it again are you going to bite my head off?" She shot a look back up at him, and while he was still standing stiffly with his hands behind his back, she sensed that he was actually feeling calmer than he looked.

"Off?" She asked with a smile that she hoped didn't look as rough as she suddenly felt. She was sure he was forgiving her too easily. "No, but I might gnash my teeth a bit though." He looked surprised again, and his mandibles twitched before flaring a bit from his face in what she suddenly recognized as a smile.

"I don't know that human teeth are all that frightening." He shook his head.

"Oh, shut up. Just because yours are all sharp and pointy doesn't mean anything. You don't know what damage I can do with these." She laughed at him, suddenly very glad that he was interested in laughing with her. She savored the feeling of quiet joy that he was willing to forgive her… outburst.

"Not much…" Now his arms crossed against his chest, and he leaned against the console, crossing his ankles as well. Completely relaxed again.

"Yeah, you're right." Her eyes settled on his boots. Only two toes. So strange, different from all of her other crewmates—except for Tali. So different from her five stubby little toes that left warm condensation marks on the cold metal deckplates. She pulled her knees up and sat crosslegged, hiding her ten toes away and looked up at him, suddenly realizing that maybe she wasn't the only one looking for a friend.

"So… I'm assuming that neither one of us plans on sleeping tonight," He began, and then looked over to the elevator. "Do you want to go take advantage of some lovely prepackaged ration bars? Or maybe some standard issue bottled water?"

Did he just…

"Did you just ask me…" _on some strange approximation of a date? _Seriously, was that just some version of a pick-up line? After she completely kirked out on him? She laughed a little, then looked back up at him.

His eyes glittered, and he waved his hands out.

"I'll even make you coffee when it's time for morning shift." He offered, his voice was tinged as if he knew that the offer should be appealing.

"Are you... are you bribing me?" She stood up to him but couldn't keep her grinning cheeks down.

"Well, I think you owe me… just a little. So if coffee helps make sure that you _really_ owe me…" He backed away towards the elevator, hands still spread in a shrug.

"What? I'll have to fall in line?" She followed him and keyed the elevator to close after he followed her in. "You might turn out to be more trouble than you're worth, Vakarian."

"I wouldn't say that so soon, Shepard." She raised an eyebrow at his use of her name, but kept quiet. Hadn't she just shouted at him until he was calling her 'ma'am'? "You've barely seen me in action, yet. Trust me, you need my style."

"Okay." She scoffed a little, but still remembered that shot he took in Dr. Michel's clinic.

"Besides—and don't go crazy for me saying this—I think I'm the only one here who recognizes those marks on your neck."

"Vakarian…" She started. The heat was rising through her shoulders again, she felt that same need to shout, the need she had given into before with him—the need to push away, to keep herself partitioned. She saw him watching her, carefully, realized he was giving her a look like she was a wild varren—a wild animal not to be trusted, and carefully calmed that need.

"Okay. Okay, Vakarian. But you're going to have to be very careful around that subject. I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean anything like what you're thinking. And it's… right now maybe isn't a good time for that." She said. Too fresh. Maybe he'd convince her to talk later… or maybe she'd get some sleep and be able to shut her damn mouth.

But.

She remembered that glimpse of possibility that… Nihlus… had showed her…. the possibility that letting someone in wouldn't be the worst mistake she could make. Maybe she could take that lesson, and make her contact with him mean something. If she could just make sure… that what? That she lets the right people in? How? Though she understood acquaintances, teammates—nothing personal of herself, only tell them what they need to know, but ask good questions, be curious, courteous.

Lovers were easy, too. A quick fuck, or even those she kept going back to, it was always business and then back to her bunk, or send them away to theirs. But friends? If she could gain a friend… Would that make _him _mean something? Would it do enough for his memory? She looked back at the turian standing between her and the elevator.

"How do I know that I can trust you?" she asked. He looked a little taken aback.

"I just… you look like you could use a friend." He said quietly. She nodded.

"Yeah… You'll have to help me figure out how to return the favor though." His brow plates quirked in a manner she hadn't seen before, but she felt indicated some sort of question. "I don't really know much about being a friend."

"Oh." She could tell he didn't really know what she meant.

The elevator opened. She sighed. She wasn't sure _she _knew what she meant.

"Come on, we're not discussing this in the mess, I know that."


	8. Chapter 8

They had their hands full of coffee and whiskey which she didn't realize he could drink—apparently liquor didn't affect the dextro/levo dichotomy. They had chatted and joked while making coffee, and in her case, digging through the mess cabinets for the booze she knew would be stashed somewhere. However, now he stopped at the entrance to her cabin and stood there awkwardly, hands laden with the two coffee mugs he insisted on carrying for them.

She sat down the whiskey and the two shot glasses at the nearest desk and then looked at him and then across her empty and blank cabin. He seemed to be staring at her lone duffel on the big desk with some sort of trepidation on his face. She sighed. That dislike and discomfort she felt in this room was back.

"I don't have much to fill up a cabin this big." She said quietly. His mouth was still open slightly, and she couldn't hold back the amused chuckle as his head swiveled to meet her eyes. "But… It would probably help if you came all the way in."

He shut his mouth and took the two steps to set the mugs down on the middle desk and sat himself in the chair. Then he stood back up and turned the chair around. She did laugh this time, and went to sit on the bed and laid out the two shot glasses. She poured, and he drank his, and she hers.

Whoever bought the whiskey had no idea what they were doing, she decided as she fought the urge to gag.

"Oh, that is awful!" She proclaimed.

"All of your human stuff is awful, if you ask me." Garrus said, his mandibles were fluttering in what she assumed was the equivalent of the grimace she was trying to calm. "I'd take ryncol any day."

"Yeah, well, it is technically an Alliance ship… I think bad whiskey is the usual contraband." She shrugged. She figured she might as well bite the bullet as she saw him staring at the unmade blankets on her bed. Bad whiskey made her brave. "So, what exactly did you figure about… my neck?" He brought his eyes back to her face, calculating.

"Well, tell me how good of a detective I am." He began, "The Spectre that went with you to Eden Prime, his name was Nihlus, right?"

"Yeah." The voice that wanted to confirm that he probably wasn't too bad of a detective got stuck in her throat. Hearing him say it hurt somehow.

"I know he was turian. So how well did you really know him?" She looked up at him, again surprised. This damn turian. She couldn't decide what she saw before her. Suddenly she wasn't sure if he was the nice guy offering to be her friend again, or if he was here in her cabin now, playing the damn C-Sec officer inquiring into a conspiracy. Nihlus' words rang back in her head.

"_Before I'm even supposed to have met you? Even Spectres have a little accountability. Think about it, if I show up for a mission to evaluate a recruit I requested and she is covered in turian bite marks?"_

He knew someone would ask questions. He fucking knew; he knew it would look bad, and he went and bedded her anyways, and left her with that stupid hope that it could be something more, something wonderful, and fucking Saren murdered him.

She dropped her head into her hands and sighed. She was stuck in this mess now.

"It wasn't like that." She cursed. She didn't realize that those stupid betraying tears were back until her voice caught in her throat as she spoke. She immediately backtracked, breathing deep and reigning in that emotion. Whether Vakarian was really interested in being her _friend_ or not, C-Sec officer or not, she definitely needed him on the ground team, needed his aim and quick thinking, and needed at least a working relationship. Devolving in tears—she was sure—wouldn't win her that with a turian.

"It wasn't like that," She tried again, and her voice came out clearer. She looked up, to realize he had stood up and was oddly frozen, one clawed hand reaching towards her knee. "I only met him the night before—some fucked up coincidence. I was looking for…" _a way to escape my old teammate? Someone to fuck so she didn't have to think? _"Someone to spend shore leave with… and we went to some hotel."

He dropped his hand and stood next to her bed like he wished he could leave, so she kept talking.

"I had no idea who he was, but he knew me. So when he started naming details about the mission, I almost knocked him cold in the middle of the bar and ran, but I figured that would cause more of a scene than finding a way to take him out quietly, but then… I liked him." She smiled a little to herself.

"_You walked up to me!_"

"Ah… That's not exactly what I figured." He confessed, and moved the chair to sit closer to her, more comfortable.

"What," she asked, again trying not to be offended, trying to joke like they had a moment before, "didn't take me for a one-night-stand type?" As soon as she said it she knew it was a jab and regretted it, but he gave it right back.

"No, just figured the first human Spectre had a little help." Her eyes cut up, ready to fall into the training that let her pin Nihlus to the wall, that got her through Akuze and her N-trials—but faltered when she recognized one of those crooked turian grins.

He said something about being her friend. Do friends really insult each other like that? But she saw him smirk.

"If you want to play it like that, Shepard, I can give as good as you can." She wasn't sure what kind of warning that was supposed to be.

"So you don't think I earned this? You think I got stuck in this fucking position… what? Because I fucked my way to the top?" Her head was spinning. She felt like she was about to throw something at him.

"No, no, put the bottle down. I didn't say that." She realized she was clutching the neck of the whiskey bottle, and set it on the floor, but laid her fisted hands back on her knees. "Wow, I'm not sure I could mess up more with you if I tried." He rubbed the back of his neck in an embarrassed gesture as he moved towards her, gently smoothing her hands down onto her crossed knees.

"Vakarian… I'm on a mission to take down the man who killed my… he wasn't even my boyfriend—he wasn't my anything—and you're the only person who seems to have put together that there was anything happening. He's dead, and I can't let on to anyone that anything happened, because they'll all assume exactly what you just did. So if you want to keep talking feel free to shove your foot farther down your throat, but just know that anything could happen down on the ground on this next mission."

"You wouldn't."

"I would. If I had to." She stood up from her bed and stood a few feet away from him. "But I like you so far. I don't want to do fight with you. I'd much rather…" _we figure this friendship thing out._ She sighed. Sat back on the bed. This was becoming downright melancholy now. "I should probably… You should probably go."

The cabin was silent for too long before she finally looked up to see him staring at her again. Still. Once her eyes met his she realized he was challenging her. He didn't want to leave, he was making that clear and she felt the heat of anger rise from her shoulders up her neck again. She took her shotglass and her bottle of whiskey and stood back up. She stepped into his space and resisted the urge to be so obvious as to buck at him—she didn't even know if that was a physical gesture that turians understood—but she couldn't stop her chin from lifting. She didn't like the challenge to what she said—she had suggested that he leave… why wasn't he leaving? The tiny lights of his eyes weren't locked on hers though, and she was momentarily confused. They darted all over her face before they finally settled on her mouth.

Which she was not at all okay with.

When he didn't back down, she slammed the bottle down on the desk, probably harder than necessary, but he still moved. He walked around the desk and picked up his mug. He was very pointedly not leaving until he began to walk very slowly towards her cabin door, facing her the whole way, watching her the whole time. As he took another sip of his coffee, she really wished she was better at reading him.

"Get some sleep and, ah… Let me know if I owe you another coffee in the morning."

When the door slid shut automatically she wished she could have slammed it in his damn face.


	9. Chapter 9

When she woke up in the morning, she was glad she wasn't hungover.

A few more shots of the terrible whiskey had done enough to settle her body and let her sleep, but it had done absolutely nothing for the terrible mood Vakarian had left her in. Self-pity, confusion and mourning were not a recipe for good sleep.

So, before her alarm went off she pulled herself out of bed to interact with her new crew instead of wallowing any longer in the dissipating dreams that left her vaguely unsettled. She showered and dressed in bodysuit and armor and stepped outside of her room.

To her mild surprise, the alien teammates she'd picked up were sitting at the mess table… including Vakarian. Of course. Sitting facing the door to her cabin, relaxed and sprawled across a chair.

Wrex was taking up most of the near side of the mess table, Tali on the end and Vakarian next. She quietly grabbed a ration bar and sat in the available seat, the one next to her buddy from last night.

"Ready for groundside?" She asked, looking at Wrex. The huge krogan just grinned and chuckled darkly. Shepard raised an eyebrow at him but he just shook his head.

"Am I ready to go pick up an asari from some quiet deserted ruins? Sure, but I'm also ready to go kill something."

"Fair enough." She responded, opening her ration bar. There was nothing like processed proteins in the morning.

"I'm just ready for you guys to leave us in a standard orbit long enough for me to look at the drive core." Tali said. "I've never seen a ship like this before. It's exciting." She was sure that there was a grin behind that murky purple mask.

"I'll make sure engineering knows you're allowed free reign down there." Shepard nodded. She went back to choking down her ration bar and tried to fight through her morning haze. She didn't realize she was staring blankly at the table top until something moved in front of her.

A mug of steaming black coffee sat next to her hand.

"You said two sugars, right?" She looked up at Vakarian, mid-chew, and really wished she knew what was going on in his spiky head.

"Yeah." He nodded at the mug again. She swallowed at the rations stuck in her throat—was it rations? She glanced at Wrex who seemed to be smirking—or whatever the krogan equivalent was—and picked it up to take a sip.

"Thanks."

He seemed like he was too interested in her to begin with, too close, seemed to understand more than she was comfortable with a virtual stranger seeing in her; but the way they moved across the battlefield in some sort of unity really threw Shepard for a loop.

It had to be their military backgrounds. It had to be that what the turian military taught their soldiers was similar to what Alliance taught theirs. Maybe it had something to do with that strict turian upbringing; some sort of 'pay attention to your CO' mandate? Clearly, whatever lesson it was, Garrus had learned it and learned it well. Maybe he was on some sort of special storm team at C-Sec, too, because he sure as hell didn't seem to need any time to fall into the swing of active combat from his time as a detective.

But really, it was eerie, how similar his style was to her own. It was like they were meant to be partners—and that thought itself gave her pause.

She would order a move over the comms—when they weren't jammed—and turn her head to find that he was already there, or she would see an enemy coming around to flank as soon as he called for her to take it down. And they moved smoothly from cover in turns, sniping from behind obstacles. They kept taking turns at the droves of geth that Wrex drew out, one taking a shot while the other's weapon cooled, covering the other every time they needed to dash forward. She wasn't sure Wrex even got touched. She was left a little... unsettled by the looks they kept shooting each other as they moved up side by side. She was reminded of the way his eyes caught her with a challenge the night before in her quarters.

However, she couldn't resist a whoop of victory as she took down a geth that tried to sneak around a railing he was ducking behind. He gave her an odd one-fingered salute that she seriously hoped was a gesture of thanks in whatever turian paradigm he used, because it looked a little too much like a human gesture that she was sure she wouldn't appreciate.

Shepard made a mental note to ask later, and to review and set down a universal—for her team, at least—set of field gestures. One that accommodated varying numbers of digits.

Wrex took out the last geth that was ducking below cover on the platform, and their radar suddenly cleared, the comms opened up again. Shepard stood and checked a locker for any goods or credits, and tossed the targeting VI that she found at Garrus, waited for him to quickly snap in onto his rifle.

"Alright, come on, boys." She said, leading them towards the spot the targeting maps marked as the entrance to the Prothean ruins.

"Boys?" The turian looked up from his rifle with those plates over his eyes knocked at disparate angles, but Wrex just laughed that deep, unsettling laugh of his and trucked up the hill.

"You heard me, Vakarian." She couldn't help but grin at him before she turned to follow the Krogan. She resisted the urge to slap a hand on his tiny turian rear-end in a 'good-game' gesture. That would probably be a cultural specific that could start a real fight. God help her, but she did like him. Couldn't decide if she trusted him further than she could throw him, but she did like him.

The entrance to the digsite was just ahead across another stretch of mostly open field, and Shepard thought she saw a glint of something metal before a flash of something red knocked her down, and her shields out. She lay on the ground, dazed for a moment before she realized she was moving again, something dragging her by the collar of her hardsuit. She realized her ears were ringing, but she managed to hang on to her rifle.

Garrus threw her against a nearby boulder, knelt to take a shot, and then turned back around to her. She realized she could hear Wrex roaring and forced herself to get a grip on her gun, she turned around to try and spot a target, and quickly ducked back down. She took a deep breath; too many targets. Fucked up frog geth things, with some sort of sniper-like armaments, a giant, monster sized geth, and one of the huge four legged platforms.

She realized Garrus was applying a dose of medigel to the side of her face and shrugged him off. She could almost hear right again, and she dashed off to a spot of nearby cover, and slowed her breathing, focusing to take out one of the frogs, but the 'regular' geth were moving closer.

"Overload!" She shouted at him, and he raised his omni-tool. Blue energy crackled along several metal bodies, and she took out one, two with the closest she could manage to a headshot.

She watched Wrex storm one of the frog-geth and take it out with a massive fist to the head. All that was left was the giant four legged monster. She gestured Garrus up through the space that Wrex opened up, and followed herself. She tossed a few grenades at it, Garrus used another overload, and Wrex used some sort of biotic push at it, and it went down quicker than she expected.

She leaned against the column she was using for cover and breathed.

Wrex was laughing through the comm, and she watched him walk up to her.

"I like you, human. You're a little bit crazy." He stood in front of her, hefting that heavily modded shotgun of his.

"Fuck." She replied. "Garrus, you got the rest of that medigel now?" She realized that she must have some sort of scalp wound, because there was more blood dripping into her eyes. Medi-gel would help.

"That's gonna leave a mark." He said quietly as he spread the cool green gel over the top of her head. A few strands of bloodied hair stuck to his hand, and she laughed quietly. She pulled the goopy strands from his wrist and wiped them on the column behind her.

"I don't care; just get it to stop bleeding." He nodded.

"You should be good." She started trying to wipe the blood off of her face, but stopped when she heard Wrex laughing again.

"What?" She snapped at him.

"You're going to scare the shit out of this asari we're going in here to grab." She rolled her eyes, wiping off her bloodied hand on the exposed body suit at the back of her thigh.

"Move out." And with that she stalked up the ramp to the ruin's entrance.


	10. Chapter 10

"Thanks for your help today."

"No problem."

She sat down at the mess table with a steaming bowl of noodles and meat. They were rehydrated noodles and preserved Alliance ration mystery meat, but it was hot, salty, and she hadn't had to cook it.

Tali had been teaching Alenko how to cook dextro-safe meals, and he had taught her how to rehydrate ration meals. So the crew got dinner fixed for them, however she wasn't sure it was really a fair trade. Looking at the plate Garrus had in front of him, she was fairly certain that somehow he and Tali had ended up with much better food stores than the rest of those on board.

However, the exercise had the humans socializing with the alien crew, and when she had hauled herself into her quarters to shower, Alenko and Tali had been laughing together over pots and pans. She was less than bothered by bland meals if everyone could get along like she had feared they wouldn't.

"Wanna try some?" He asked, teasingly holding out a forkful of what looked like meat in dark gravy.

"No thanks, I like my internal organs the way they are." She laughed; she'd heard enough horror stories about what could happen if she did eat dextro-foods to not be interested. At best it would simply contain no nutritional value at all and her body wouldn't be able to process it, however urban legends held that at worst, she'd have some sort of horrible allergic reaction and die a painful and gruesome death.

"Have it your way." He took a large bite, mandibles held close to his face and spoke through his food. "Looks better than what you got. What _is_ that?" He looked at it with something had had to have been disgust.

"Noodles." She demonstrated raising a forkful. They dripped greasily back into the bowl.

"Yum." He took another bite of his meat and gravy.

"Oh shut up, Vakarian." She couldn't believe she was laughing with him.

"Did the doctor fix up your head?" He asked, gesturing with his fork.

"She fixed the cut." She said quietly, slurping some noodles. "She said you did a good job on it. You patch up a lot of human heads at C-Sec?"

"No... not really. But I used to have to stop by that doctor's clinic at the Citadel. She helped me out with a few… sticky situations."

"What does that mean?" She asked. He sighed and sat down his fork.

"I've was never really a good officer. Some of my interrogation techniques… caused a few problems."

"So you're an agent of police brutality?" She laughed again. Excellent. She had a psychotic turian on board.

"No! Just… Some people I needed information from there was no other way to get it. And when it's the kind of people who aren't going to go to the police to complain anyways, the people who help cause the problems… I just had a hard time adhering to 'innocent until proven guilty' when they know that I know that they've done it—whatever 'it' is—and still want to push me. I just came to realize that people commit these crimes against others, they don't deserve the protection of the authorities anymore."

"That's a pretty strong belief." She wasn't really sure what she thought about it. She'd never really been stuck in a peacekeeping position like he was. But peacekeeping was really the role of the turians in general—both the turian army and basically every other turian she'd come across, as security guards, personal body guards, C-Sec officers. From what she understood they were trained all their lives to subject themselves to the greater good, all dutiful public servants.

Except for a few. Garrus seemed a little more complex than that, though. He didn't seem to have an easy time going along with that 'needs of the many' approach to doing good in the world.

"I guess. It just kills me to see the law protect people who… don't deserve it. I'm not sure how much longer I could have stayed there… anyways."

"I don't know. You might have a point… Laws are enacted to protect people from others, but it does seem too absolute sometimes. And how do you decide who deserves anything anyways?" She asked. "Good and bad—evil—whatever you want to call it; that's not something I know how to deal with."

"If you don't know good from evil, how do you decide what's right?" He asked. He seemed somewhat flabbergasted.

"I don't know." She said with a smile. "Doing a bad thing for a good reason? Sounds like your 'interrogation techniques.' The lines aren't always so clear, if you ask me. That's life. Good and evil are too big—too nebulous for me. All I know is what I see. I used to study religions and philosophy, but it really just made me realize that all I can know is what I've experienced. So I joined the navy. It's a family trade, and the Alliance does good work, despite the paperwork. It's the best way I've found to make a difference."

"That's… interesting."

"What? You think I'm wrong?" She asked, trying to lighten to mood again.

"No!" He seemed to jump. And she laughed, glad she had thrown him off. "No, I just… it's interesting."

"Good. I'd hate to be boring you, Vakarian."

"Oh, please." He drawled. "It's hard to be bored when my dinner is so damn delicious…"

"Yeah? You're going to be wearing it if you keep bragging about it." She grinned as he carefully scooted his plate away from her. She nodded, studying him carefully. "Good work today. I appreciate you putting your ass on the line for me like that, but I'd rather you be careful yourself. I'll be fine."

"What, you don't think I can handle covering your six all of the time?" He teased.

"No. You better be able to handle it." She shoved another forkful of noodles in her mouth and continued around them. "Just beginning to decide that I'd like you to be on my team until we catch up with Saren. We worked well together."

"Just until we get Saren?" He asked. She raised an eyebrow, not sure she was following quite where he was going with this.

"That's what you signed on for, isn't it?" She asked. He shrugged, kept eating. She took a bite herself, tried to ignore the somewhat worrisome way she could feel her heartbeat in her ribcage. She tried not to imagine the end of the mission, Nihlus still gone, Saren in custody… and Garrus gone, too?

"Besides, you just…" She stopped herself from finishing that sentence. "_You just seem too good to be true."_ Instead she started asking him about military tactics, the field gestures from earlier, and this time she had him laughing when she explained that his 'thank you' gesture was a spitting image of a human 'fuck you'.

Despite their laughing, by the time she finished eating around their conversation, Shepard was really ready to go to sleep. She didn't think the head injury had been quite so bad, but she was much more tired than she should be. The mission report was typed up before she went to eat, so she was clear to head to sleep.

She said her goodnights to her turian… friend and headed to her cabin. Tonight, between the head injury and the mild pain pills Dr. Chakwas had given her she was out.


	11. Chapter 11

She couldn't resist taking him down planetside on every mission she went on. She knew other people on the crew had noticed, particularly Williams—and she had had several choice words for the gunnery chief about her obvious racism. She had requested that if the chief couldn't open her mind that she at least shut her mouth. And the chief had, at least for that day.

Wrex had laughed to himself from his corner of the cargo bay after she had finished speaking to the gunnery chief.

Garrus had kept his eyes lowered as he and Tali had loaded into the Mako in preparation for the drop planetside.

Shepard couldn't help but notice that something was off with her team, which was upsetting, because the three of them usually worked well together, especially when they were expecting to deal with any kind of tech.

"Don't worry about Williams." She said as Garrus somehow folded himself into the front seat next to her.

"It's fine, Shepard." Tali said quietly. She always loved how the quarian's accent curled around her words, but her tone raised Shepard's warning meter. "I think we all know that you don't feel the same as she does."

"That's right, I fucking don't." She agreed quietly. "That woman… She's great at her job, but her attitude towards half of my crew makes me livid. I talk to her and I talk to her and she'll say that she'll straighten up, she'll say that she'll keep her comments to herself, she'll say that she'll 'give the aliens a chance,' but every time she says something out of line like that in front of you guys, I don't have a way to take her to task for it." She shrugged. "I've already grounded her." Shepard sighed. She looked between the two of them, Garrus was watching her carefully. "This stays between us, of course. I don't think Wrex cares too much, but I know that things she's said have bothered you two. And can I ask… I know I'm human too, and my species has its issues, but I for one can't look at you guys and see anything other than… well, some of my closest friends. But… if you were me, what would you do?"

Tali shook her head, and Shepard noticed her slump a little deeper into the jump seat.

"You can't force people to change their minds. That's something I've already discovered on my pilgrimage. Plenty of people have something against all quarians just because of what happened years ago, and now because we don't live like they do. But knowing it doesn't help but so much. It's… it's hard no matter what. " She tilted her masked face towards Shepard and shrugged a little bit. She looked towards Garrus.

"Ultimatums are always fun." He said quietly.

"It's just that we've saved each other's asses so many times… and no one should ever have to prove that they're worth being treated like a human being. Or... sentient being?" She grimaced over her fumble.

"Shepard, really, there's always going to be something… someone like that. I was warned that this would be part of my pilgrimage. That someone is going to give me trouble because of my people. You can't change that all by yourself."

Shepard sighed and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel.

"Who cares what Williams thinks? I'm here to help you finish this." Garrus said quietly, scooting his knees against the dashboard panel.

Shepard picked her head up and looked at him. She felt like she could see something in the way his eyes held hers in the artificial dashboard light, but she wasn't sure what. She sighed and dropped her hands from the steering wheel. She was already indebted to both of them.

"Wanna drive?" she asked him. His mandibles twitched in an expression that she interpreted as some sort of pleasant surprise.

"Why Shepard, I thought you'd never ask." He said quietly, mandibles flicking in a grin.

"Oh, keelah, Garrus, please drive!" Tali exclaimed from the back.

"Really?" Shepard asked. "You really don't want me to drive that badly?"

"Shepard, you couldn't see the bruise on my head under the back." Tali said derisively.

"Fine, fine, I'll take the gun. For everyone's health." Despite her sarcasm, Shepard surrendered the driver's seat with a grin and watched as Garrus took it proudly, starting the engine, and radioing Joker that they were ready for the drop zone whenever he was.

"Ah… No offense, Shepard." Tali placed a hand on her arm as she stepped into the passenger seat. The vehicle gracefully dropped from the Normandy.

"I could call this mutiny, you know."

"You like us too much to actually press charges." Garrus retorted. Shepard stuck her tongue out at the back of his head, causing Tali to giggle.

"I love it when you two take me planetside with you." She said, turning to watch the landscape rush towards them and gently slow its approach as Garrus deployed the landing thrusters.

"When we…"

"Us two? What?" Shepard felt his stomach hit the floor even though she was at the back at the raised gunnery seat. "I take everyone down on missions. I need all of you." She heard Tali giggle like that again, and just wanted to run. That spot between her shoulder blades felt hot—her warning sign. Was she showing favoritism? Did she need to reexamine her leadership choices? She couldn't help it, over the past several months tracking down leads on Saren, she rarely felt more safe and sure of herself than she did with Garrus at her back, making jokes at her expense. He didn't really feel like a team member—a subordinate—he felt like a friend. He'd become irreplaceable.

And that thought—that realization got her even more worried. But Tali kept talking as if she had no idea there were panicked thoughts running through Shepard's mind.

"Oh sure! I can tell that. Liara spends all of her time doing research and tracking down information for you, Chief Williams takes care of all the equipment for you, I think Wrex speaks for himself," the quarian seemed to acknowledge their team's krogan as an obvious choice, "But you two are always together. You make me laugh." She said, and her masked face glanced back to Shepard.

Garrus was conspicuously silent, she could see both of his hands locked onto the top of the steering assembly as he drove them towards the marker silently blinking on the radar. Shepard took a deep breath and put on her diplomatic face, trying to steer them back to the task at hand.

"Well, Tali, today's your lucky day, because Garrus seems to be taking the slowest path possible to our downed probe." She ended with a jab to the turian's driving, which seemed to help, because not only did Tali giggle again, but Garrus finally piped up and defended himself.

"I just like getting there without cracking my fringe on the display console."

"But seriously, we could get there today, Garrus." He retorted with a burst of power to the Mako's engines that knocked her head against the targeting grip.

"Right. Got it, Vakarian."

"I think you called it 'backseat driving' the other day?"

"I think I did."

"We'll stop doing it. You said I could drive."

"I didn't think you'd drive like a grandmother though…"

"I'd just like to _not_ have to put drive shaft back together tonight."

"Fine, Vakarian. I guess you get tonight off."

"Oh, why thank you."

"Shut up."

She glanced between her two teammates, and as her eyes settled on the back of Garrus' fringe poking over the back of the driver's seat, she wondered what the hell was wrong with her.


	12. Chapter 12

Dinner was waiting for them as they came back up from the crew deck. Today was quiet, no real enemies groundside, and thanks to Garrus' driving, he had no repairs to do on the Mako. The ground team made their way up in the elevator ribbing each other gently, and seeking food.

To Shepard's surprise, Alenko had cooked. He had cooked for everyone, levo and dextro. And he had cooked Shepard's favorite for the humans—spaghetti and meatballs. And from somewhere he had found a giant bottle of powdered reconstituted cheese to spread on top.

While her stomach growled in anticipation—they had been running around planetside all day—she was suspicious. While she always made her rounds and got to know all of her crewmembers, the lieutenant had seemed to read something else into her almost daily meetings with him. He seemed to always ask the personal questions that she was so uncomfortable with. Most of her crewmembers had gathered that Shepard didn't really 'make friends' even though she was always willing to listen, help out whenever she could. Most people had realized that she tended to keep herself fairly private.

But Alenko had not seemed to pick up on that, as sensitive as he portrayed himself. He still asked about her family, what she did outside of the Alliance, asked what she was doing after the next mission—when what she did after each mission was the same, check in with Chakwas and Pressley, type up her mission report, and have dinner with her crew or ground team. Usually she and Garrus and Tali, sometimes Liara or Wrex hung around drinking a few beers until she turned in.

He seemed to smile too much. He acted like he was terribly shy with her, when she could plainly see that he wasn't. She found him to be disingenuous. Occasionally, he made references to how attractive she was, and then played it off as an accidental admission, and she found it rather bothered her. Usually she could ignore someone who didn't understand that she really didn't like talking about herself, didn't like to have friends, could ignore an offhand comment made in conversation, but something about the biotic's overtly shy way of dropping hints that he was interested in her put a bad taste in her mouth. As far as she was concerned physical attraction was a thing fine to indulge in from time to time, but didn't necessarily mean she wanted him hovering over her, assuming some bizarre role as a self-assumed romantic paramour.

She didn't even want romance. She wasn't even sure what it was supposed to be.

Hell, even her shore-leave escapades were chosen by criteria other than looks. She didn't go for looks exclusively, and she wasn't interested in people who just wanted to look at her. She wanted some fun. So, she had tried to drop hints that he really wasn't her type. He was too pretty, too nice, too obnoxiously sure of himself, but just as subtle as he was not with his own overtures, she was apparently putting everything too delicately. It reminded her of her old team member, Clyden, but with less machismo.

The ground team filed out of the elevator, and Tali immediately exclaimed her pride at the smell of the food. As far as Tali was concerned, Alenko was coming along well as a chef of quarian cuisine. They had stripped of armor down at the armory station in the cargo bay—except for Garrus who didn't seem to own clothing—so they all crowded around the table and began loading plates of food. As the team began to serve themselves, she couldn't help but cut her eyes to Alenko every time she thought someone might not notice. He kept staring at her.

"You okay?" She jumped at Garrus' voice in her ear. The tone of voice he used was too alike to what he used when they were in the field doing recon and they both just _knew_ something wasn't right

"Fine." She said, hoping he'd drop it. He'd obviously picked up on how unsettled Alenko left her with his pointed staring. She hated that she was telegraphing her unease, hated that she was that easy to read.

"I don't know… Do you think he poisoned it?" However, she should have known better, she realized. She should have known that not only would Garrus not drop it, but that he'd do something to make her feel better about it. She laughed lightly at her own expense as he flared his mandibles to take a bite of whatever Alenko had prepared for the two dextros. The plate he held in his hand looked like it was possibly an approximation of spaghetti and meatballs, some sort of squirmy noodles smothered in a chunky green sauce.

"Is it safe?" She whispered, watching him chew that first—clearly experimental—bite, and then let herself sigh in mock relief as he slowly nodded.

"Doesn't taste like pyjack poison… But it's way too spicy." He winked at her, and she couldn't help the moment of surprise.

"Was that… Did you just wink at me, Garrus Vakarian?"

"Who, me?" He tightened his mandibles in a grin, and walked around her to go sit. There was a cocky hitch to his step that she couldn't help but smile at.

Then she noticed Alenko still staring at her.

That spark of brightness that Garrus left her with immediately soured. This man, she definitely did not trust. Yet she walked up to him with a slight smile on her face and accepted the plate he handed her.

"You're not turning into the cook, are you Alenko?" She asked, hoping to deflect his usual need to have a deep, serious conversation with her with humor—a habit she had probably picked up from her new turian friend.

"Nah, just trying to do what I can to support you guys. Haven't seen much time groundside." He said quietly. She wondered, somewhat exasperated if everyone on the ship was going to bring up her choice of landing parties.

"I figured you'd like the time off. You don't seem like a soldier at heart. You seem a little too…" _don't say nice—don't say nice_ "…nice enjoy running around shooting mercs and slavers all day." Shit. And he laughed. Shit. Now he thinks that she's flirting. The back of her mind was screaming _"Abort! Abort!"_ and she quickly obeyed.

She grabbed the ration can of cheese and made her thanks to him.

"Well thanks for the dinner." She nodded curtly and went to sit at the open spot at the table.

She was really going to have to make him face the fact that she wasn't interested one of these days. How she dreaded that conversation.

And why was the one empty seat always the one next to Vakarian? She felt her shoulders tighten with tension as she dumped a huge pile of powdered cheese over her meal.

"Are you okay, Shepard?" Tali asked this time, and Shepard tried not to huff. She didn't want to appear even more irritated… or send the powdered cheese flying. She forced herself to exhale slowly, feeling a knot begin to twist itself up in the back of her shoulders.

"Fine!" Shepard asserts brightly. Too cheerful. "Fine." She repeats, hoping it's more believable the second time.

She shoves a mouthful of spaghetti into her mouth and realizes that everyone present is looking at her. Wrex is sitting there with a fork fisted in his massive paw, a bite of spaghetti loaded up… just laughing that unsettling laugh of his.

"Just hungry." Tali accepts that and goes back to her food, but Alenko and Garrus are still staring at her. She sighs, and retreats to her cabin as soon as she's finished eating.

She showers and gets dressed in fatigues, and hears her omni-tool ping with a message. She opens it to find a text from Garrus.

_You going to hide in your cabin all night because the lieutenant creeped you out?_

She laughed. God. That damn turian had caught her. That really was her plan for the rest of the evening. And he knew. He fucking knew.

She was about to get angry and assert that that was not at all what she was planning to do, and she was just getting ready to come bring some beers down to the cargo hold so they could mess with gun mods and the targeting system on the Mako, and why in the hell was he rushing her already, did he miss her that badly?

..when she realized that was probably exactly the reaction he wanted.

She sat down. If he was trying to play her, she could play back. Her hand hovered over the screen of her omni-tool, composing the best message she could.

_Not exactly. _

His reply came just a moment later.

_Not exactly what? Not exactly creeped out? Or not exactly hiding?_

Perfect.

_Not exactly hiding. When are you going to fish out that bottle of whiskey? I have a deck of cards that are calling our names. _

His reply this time took a few minutes.

_On my way. _

Gotcha.


End file.
